Maybe you stumbled across their CD in your mom’s car while home for Thanksgiving. Or maybe you’ve noticed that the name is popping up everywhere lately. And maybe you have one simple question: What’s a “Pentatonix”?
Allow us to introduce you. Pentatonix is an a cappella group that’s been around for several years but has recently become inescapable with a hugely popular Christmas album. The group’s “That’s Christmas to Me” debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 in October and has steadily racked up sales and streams since. Near the top of the Amazon, iTunes and Spotify charts, the album sold 227,000 units this week alone — placing it at No. 2 on the Billboard chart with 408,000 total copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (Expect that total to greatly increase as holiday season marches on.) Yahoo notes it’s the highest-charting Christmas album since 1962.
How did this happen? Thank reality TV, of course! Pentatonix (a quintet made up of vocalists Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Avi Kaplan and Kirstie Maldonado, along with beatboxer Kevin Olusola) broke through on NBC’s criminally underappreciated “The Sing-Off.” The show is an a cappella singing competition beloved by a niche viewership, but it rarely makes the cut for a full season pickup. For three years, “The Sing-Off” was a limited-run series in December — this year, it’s simply been reduced to a two-hour special airing this month.
Pentatonix (or PTX, for those in the know) was born when Texas high school singing pals Hoying, Grassi and Maldonado wanted to try out for “The Sing-Off” in 2011. Later, they roped in Kaplan and discovered Olusola through his beatboxing YouTube videos. The group won the show in December 2011, the year NBC extended it to a full fall season with judges Ben Folds, Sara Bareilles and Shawn Stockman. In addition to a $200,000 cash prize, the group was gifted with a Sony recording contract.
